There are almost no words to describe the horror of Israel’s bombing of a tent area for displaced persons at Al Aqsa Hospital in the north of Gaza a couple of days ago. Even the US State Department described the incident as “horrific.”
I do not know how the population of Gaza will psychologically handle the aftermath of this last year+ of war. With so many people being killed, injured and disappeared, undoubtedly the repercussions will last decades. It’s much the same, I imagine, as with histories of Jewish trauma, which research shows has moved through generations epigenetically.
Sometimes when I see or read the responses of Israelis to the ongoing violence happening to Gazans, I try to put myself in their shoes. Generally, their first reply to the horrors their country has committed is to say something along the lines of, “Do you know what Hamas did on October 7th?”
For some folks, I believe this is the trauma talking. Sometimes when I am able to pause and just sit with that question for a moment, I can tune in to that person’s rage or grief or sense of righteousness. It is and was quite genuinely an assault on the national psyche of Israel, and for many Jewish people around the world. I try to grasp the feeling of this was never supposed to happen here. This was never supposed to happen again. I have compassion for the individual people still reverberating from that trauma.
The Israelis and Jews around the globe who have responded to the ceaseless violence in Gaza (and the West Bank and Lebanon) by saying never again applies to those places, too give me hope. Their compassion, vulnerability, and humanity is one tiny beacon of beautiful light in a despairing darkness.
But more often than not, the “what about October 7th?!” response to the horrors in Gaza comes embedded in an sense of revenge detached from basic humanity. It is not just a thirst for revenge. It is an entitlement to harm. I find this incredibly disturbing.
The glee at attacking innocents is revolting. It’s scary to see and hear IDF soliders and Israeli citizens using, framing all Gazans as animals, or all Palestinians as terrorists. The blindness to history repeating itself is baffling.
I really wonder how much you have to detach your own self from your own humanity in order to detach others from their humanity.